Helping HomeServe improve the effectiveness of their direct marketing

Background

Direct mail is one of the main marketing tools used by HomeServe to recruit new members across their key products. We were commissioned to conduct a demands and needs assessment of their mailings – to shed light on key elements such as relevance, clarity of the offer, costs per year and potential improvements.

Approach

We opted for a Randomised Control Trial approach. In a first round of telephone research, we spoke with responders and non-responders – testing three different campaigns including a control mailer. All participants were sent one of the three mailings prior to their interview as a reminder of the mailing they had originally received in the post. We completed 45 depth interviews and 226 interviews with non-responders.

In a second stage, we conducted pre-tasked focus groups with responders and non-responders, testing a campaign created to take into account the results from the previous research. The focus this time was very much on wording and the deeper understanding of the offering.

Results

This two-phase approach allowed us to provide the client with a series of recommendations to enhance the clarity of information provided in the campaigns.

“Just to reiterate my and our thanks for a job very well done. We really appreciated your tenacity and experience in navigating some tricky challenges and delivering a very clear set of findings. And on a personal note, I was really grateful for the flexibility at different times to ensure a smooth route to the end. We appreciated, also, that these findings are hard won.”